Tag: #Recovery

Recovery = REBIRTH “In the Hour of Our Death”

“If you don’t have a loving relationship with yourself, no one else will.”

Several times on your path you will feel the need to “re-boot” and start over. “Rebirth” is available to us any time, following a period of reflection, retreat and re-centering.

“Recovery” begins to happen we manage to repel a demonic force that kept us in thrall – addiction, illusion, corruption, compulsive behavior; even a poisonous culture. Sometimes, we were hostage to another human being who didn’t have our best interests at heart.

What ARE our best interests? As our brains begin to clear we begin to understand. Ernest Hemingway used to say we are “stronger at the broken places” and Nietzsche expressed it as “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” but obviously these maxims only hold true if a complete healing has taken place.

Complete healing provides peace as well as joy. We give thanks that we have started on the journey.

Second Chances – Expect to stumble. Watching toddlers try to “rise and walk” we must consider what a good thing it is that they don’t mind being laughed at. (In fact, they love it.) It takes them quite awhile to figure out this new challenge. Like beginning skiers, they cling to objects, sway exaggeratedly back and forth, slam into others, and plop down SPLAT; not just once or twice but over and over. In fact the toddler hasn’t been born who suddenly vaults up suavely and starts swanning around in a sophisticated manner.

And those are the ones with no impediment to walking – watched hungrily by the less fortunate who only wish they could be blessed with this magical opportunity to make public fools of themselves.

Once we take in the meaning of these facts we embrace the last step of Recovery: “Expect to go splat.” Of course we don’t WANT to – fingers crossed – it’s dangerous and bruising. We’d better arrange to have someone around – just in case. But you don’t fail unless you refuse to rise again. Don’t even bother counting the times you were “brave”. It’s only the “getting back up” that counts. As long as you’re doing that, you’re a true winner.

As we study ourselves with a desire to put our best foot forward we are increasingly overwhelmed with despair. This old self won’t do. We are the club no one wants to join; us included.

We have to ask ourselves if part of our desire for the Other is a longing to be rid of Self. But how is this to be accomplished, when we know that any relationship built on fakery must surely fail. How can a New Self be the Real One?

Fortunately, there is a model for this in the recovery movement – legions of people giving up self-destructive habits and birthing a fresh new self. They say the relief is glorious, everything is more meaningful as their confidence grows. We want some of that. We must abjure all the behavior that have caused us suffering in the past. What are they, exactly? Let’s identify and enhance the wonderful things about us, the self we want to keep.

And in the Hour of Our Death

I am wind sucked
The tempest starts without me
Scuttled like a leaf

I loose your hand
My words come fire
My blood blasts forth

And vomits out
This darkness
Some god commands

I push
I flee – I won’t be born –
I push

And then relax.
It can’t happen all at once.
The corpses dance

The trees devour their own roots
I’m spat like pulp
I push –

I’ve gone too far
To get back now.
I’ve lost your cord

Threaded in the frenzy
That is life.
My lips are ceremonies

My hips are burial grounds.
Silence rushes in to bear me up and I explode
To atoms.

What is this new lightness?
Into this furnace of stars
I collapse my burdens like

A house of cards, I soar, I flirt
My strength
Is limitless

My soul, my life
An infinite caress.